Fighting Is Magic: Premium
Fighting Is Magic: Premium, sometimes shortened to just Premium (formerly as Premium Edition, "Chocolate", "Yogurt" and "KitKat") is an unofficial endeavor dedicated to reviving Mane6's fighting game Fighting is Magic, as originally conceived as the fangame based on the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic TV series, initially by using various assets contributed by fans to Mane6's unfinished leaked build, and the Tribute Edition release as its base from Beta 2 onwards. It is the first game to be built on 2D Fighter Maker 2015. __TOC__ History and development There were plans by various groups in the fandom for an attempt to finish the highly anticipated fan-game after Mane6 officially announced on February 2013 that they are cancelling the original My Little Pony fan-game due to a cease and desist letter by Hasbro, albeit had since restarted development using an original IP. Development on the revival of the original fan-game started in earnest by several groups of fans. Many builds based off of Mane6's unfinished product started appearing such as Ponychan's Build and Iwanabrawl Build (which was the created by the same development team as Tribute Edition). One such build started in April 2013, by an individual known online under the alias "Rainbow Crash PP", with the initial codename "Chocolate". Not having much experience in Fighter Maker , it was supposed to be a test version and was never intended to be released to the public. However, on May 2013, Rainbow Crash PP said that it will "still be released anyway," just to get a glimpse of what they were doing. Just weeks after "Chocolate" was released, Rainbow Crash PP announced a remake of the build in order to address some of the problematic issues in the first attempt, under the new codename "KitKat". Development for "KitKat" started in July and introduced a new character unofficially named Shadow Pie (present-day Scooter) but was halted and scrapped in late August as Rainbow Crash PP "didn't like the remake". It was rumored to be related to game issues. In early December, internal test builds were released to some selected candidates, under a new codename "Yogurt". Subsequently, Rainbow Crash PP uploaded a video update to her YouTube channel, with the description stating that the final name for Yogurt is Premium Edition. The first beta preview was released in April 6, 2014. With the release of Tribute Edition in February 2014, Premium was being silenced predominantly, as it was being featured on popular websites such as Equestria Daily and other video game related news sites. Sources claimed that Rainbow Crash PP was "jealous and decided to submit the build to such websites", but it "didn't work in the end". On the first day of 2015, an online campaign, dubbed "The Premium Circle", was posted on Rainbow Crash PP's Tumblr as a test for "winning back fans that have migrated to Tribute Edition", according to rumors. It is aimed to be a more opened build "around the circle of the fandom", designed to give fans a helping hand and a say on what they want most from the build, and even a possibility of the HD version for the game "if it goes well". This, however did not produce stellar results as of late January. Since January 23, 2015, Premium Edition was renamed to just simply "Premium". On March 30, 2015, Premium exited the beta stage and the final version, also known as V1, was released the following day. Gameplay and features Like the original Fighting Is Magic, it also consists of the first initial six main characters from the official show (Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash), a simple main menu, story and versus mode. The plan was to try to not only closely imitate where they have stopped, with video footage they had shown in past live streams and unofficial tournaments, but also with some balance changes for the 4 characters (Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie) in the unfinished build. One of the most notable features added was the options menu, which was initially not possible to be added due to technical constraints and limitations in Fighter Maker. It consists of what most popular fighting games have, such as training options and an in-game move-list (which were previously implemented in the Tribute Edition base). There were plans for an in-game art gallery cum music player called Spotlight, and a tournament mode where the player will be returned to the character selection screen after a round, but these have been shelved. As the game develops, new characters will also be introduced and added. As of Beta 6.1, 2 new characters (Scooter and Sweetie Bot) were added to the game while 2 others (Trixie, which was taken from Tribute Edition's repository and Lovestruck) have been announced at are in development. In addition, DLC characters from Tribute Edition will also be added. Plans for an OS X release of the game has long been considered, but nothing has been confirmed yet. Characters Returning playable cast * Applejack (voiced by Karen Hayman) * Twilight Sparkle (voiced by Meredith Sims) * Rarity (voiced by Kimlinh Tran) * Rainbow Dash (voiced by Susanna Brown) * Fluttershy (voiced by LilyPichu) * Pinkie Pie (voiced by Emily Fajardo) New additions * Scooter (voiced by Emily Fajardo) * Sweetie-BOT Non-playable characters * Mayor Mare (voiced by Kira Buckland) as the announcer * Scooter 100% (Final Boss) Telepone Telepone is the preferred netplay client for Premium, developed by a fan named Anniie and includes many improvements, both aesthetic and technical, over the old netplay client, MTSP. It was built around a server system, a player hosts a room for other players to join and use as a matchmaking. Some features like emoticons, replays, stats manager and more command shortcuts to certain functions were also added. It also features an item drop system, where players online would have a small chance to get an item or steal an existing item from another player. These items, however, cannot be traded and does not have any effect at the moment. Version history